Daily World News Digest, 23 August 2018

Mexico News Daily reports that kidnappings in Mexico have declined by 16 percent in the first seven months of 2018 compared to the same period last year. The numbers recorded during the term of President Enrique Peña Nieto remain the highest of any previous six-year presidential term, however, with more than 7,000 cases of disappearances registered. https://bit.ly/2N8Zltn

Nigerians missing on routes to Europe

The News Agency of Nigeria reports from the state of Edo in the south of the country, which it says has the highest number of human trafficking cases, recording more than 3,883 Libya returnees since November 2017. It quotes the chair of the state Task Force Against Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration as saying that more than half of Nigerian returnees from Libya were from Edo and that “we have records of thousands of Nigerians who were killed or missing in the Sahara Desert, Libya or the Mediterranean”. https://bit.ly/2wgzpoA

Malaysia to reopen investigation into missing pastor

Malaysia’s Human Rights Commission has announced the reopening of the public inquiry into the alleged enforced disappearance of Pastor Raymond Koh in 2017. Malaysia Kini quotes the Citizen Action Group on Enforced Disappearance as saying that the pastor’s disappearance was state-linked, and the inquiry was previously suspended at the request of the police. https://bit.ly/2nZGgii

New migrant route through Bosnia and Herzegovina

Approximately 11,000 migrants have registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina so far this year, compared to just 755 migrant arrivals for all of 2017. The influx of refugees and migrants is a result of popular migrant routes through the Balkans being shut down, leaving thousands of asylum-seekers stranded at the Croatian border, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports. https://bit.ly/2N912Hf

Items in the Daily World News Digest are summaries of published reports relevant to the issue of missing persons, compiled by ICMP staff. These items do not necessarily reflect the position of ICMP.

About ICMP

ICMP is a treaty-based international organization with Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its mandate is to secure the cooperation of governments and others in locating missing persons from conflict, human rights abuses, disasters, organized crime, irregular migration and other causes and to assist them in doing so. It is the only international organization tasked exclusively to work on the issue of missing persons.